Kevin Payne didn’t stay unemployed for a full 24 hours. A day after resigning his position as president/CEO of D.C. United, Payne was hired Wednesday to rebuild the fledgling Toronto FC franchise.

Toronto will make the hire official at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Payne, 59, will report directly to Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment President & COO Tom Anselmi.

In seven years of existence, Toronto FC has never gone to the MLS playoffs. (AP Photo/Bret Hartman)

Payne oversaw the D.C. franchise for 17 years through several ownership groups, leading the most decorated club in American soccer. The resume includes four MLS Cup titles, one runner-up finish and the CONCACAF Champions Cup winner in 1998. Now, he’ll try to replicate his successes north of the border.

“For some time I’ve been thinking about whether it was time for me to seek a new challenge, and whether D.C. United’s interest would be better served by new thinking about how to address them,” Payne told reporters Tuesday. “I have tried to be very open in the way I think about things and tried not get too hung up on a certain way of doing things, but I think we are all guilty of that at some level. ... (Jason Levien) encouraged me to do whatever I thought was the right thing for me, which I appreciated. I think remaining here at D.C. United was certainly an option. But I really did come to believe that it made sense for me to try to do something different at this point in time. I still feel young, I’m in great shape physically, and I feel excited about a new challenge.”

He’ll be tasked with helping Toronto engage an increasingly frustrated fan base after the club finished an MLS-worst 5-21-8 this season.

At the top of Payne’s to-do list will be deciding whether to retain Paul Mariner, the club’s director of soccer operations who took over as head coach after firing Aron Winter in June. Toronto went 4-2-4 in Mariner’s first 10 games as coach but then finished the season winless in its final 14 matches.